“The reason we’re starting here is this is maybe one of the oldest trees in Somesville. Whats interesting about apples like this one, when the farm was first founded, they planted these for drinking. They were for cider and for vinegar.

So if I take these seeds from this apple and plant it, I will not get this apple, because of the way the pollination works on these. Every seed in every apple on this tree is genetically unique. And so, to get a variety, you have to graft it, you have to take a tiny piece of the tree and put it onto a rootstock. The diversity that we see comes from people finding a tree like that one, which is a seedling and saying “wow thats great, I’m gonna call it the ‘Beech Hill Delicious,’ and then someone tries it and says “wow thats really good, that’s really delicious,” and they graft it and they spread it all over.

So every McIntosh tree in the world, and there are millions of them, come from one tree in Ontario that was discovered in 1794.